CHAPTER XIX.

      Table of Contents

      A TRIP TO THE COUNTRY.

      SUNDAY, on opening the window, I saw that the spring had returned. The air had grown warmer, though it was yet somewhat chilly; I felt amid the last quivers, of winter the first fervid glow of the sun. I breathed my fill of this wave of life rolling in the sky; I was delighted with the warm and somewhat biting perfumes which arose from the earth.

      Each spring my heart is rejuvenated, my flesh becomes lighter. There is a purification of my entire being.

      At the sight of the pale, clear sky, of a shining whiteness at dawn, my youth awakened. I looked at the tall wall; it was well-defined and neat; tufts of grass were growing between the stones. I glanced into the street: the stones and sidewalks had been washed; the houses, over which the rain storms had dashed, laughed in the sunlight. The young season had imparted its gayety to everything. I folded my arms tightly; then, turning around, I cried out to Laurence:

      “Get up! get up! Spring is summoning you!”

      Laurence arose, while I went out to borrow a dress and a hat from Marie, and twenty francs from Jacques.

      The dress was white, sown with lilac bouquets; the hat was trimmed with broad red ribbons.

      I hurried Laurence, dressing her hair myself, so eager was I to get out into the sunlight. In the street, I walked rapidly, without lifting my head, waiting for the trees; I heard with a sort of thoughtful emotion the sound of voices and footsteps. In the Luxembourg Garden, opposite the great clusters of chestnut trees, my legs bent under me and I was compelled to sit down. I had not been out of doors for two months. I remained seated on the bench in the garden for a full quarter of an hour, in an ecstasy over the young verdure and the young sky. I had come out of darkness so thick that the bright spring bewildered and dazzled me.

      Then, I said to Laurence that we would walk for a long, long while, straight ahead, until we could walk no longer. We would go thus into the warm but still moist air, into the perfumed grass, into the broad sunlight. Laurence, who had also been aroused by the revivifying influence of the balmy season, arose and drew me along, with hurried steps, like a child.

      We took the Rue d’Enfer and the Orleans road. All the windows were open, displaying the furniture within the houses. Upon the thresholds of the street doors stood men in blouses, who engaged in friendly chat with each other while smoking. We heard bursts of hearty laughter coming out from the shops. Everything which surrounded me, streets, houses, trees and sky, seemed to me to have been carefully cleaned. The sky had an unusually enticing and new look, white with cleanliness and light.

      At the fortifications, we encountered the first grass, short yet, but spread out like a vast carpet of light green and emitting a perfume intoxicating in its delicious freshness. We went down into the moat, making our way along beside the high gray walls, penetrating with curiosity into their secluded corners. On one side was the pale-hued stretch of wall, on the other the verdant slope. We advanced as if in a deserted and silent street which had no houses. In some of the corners the sun’s rays had massed themselves, and had caused to shoot up tall thistles which were peopled by a whole nation of insects — beetles, butterflies and bees; these corners were full of buzzing sounds and grateful warmth. But, that morning, the slope threw its delightful shadow at our feet; we walked noiselessly upon a fine, thick turf, having before us a narrow band of sky, against which stood out in full light the meagre trees which rose above the wall.

      The moats of the fortifications are little deserts, amid which I have very often forgotten myself and my troubles. The narrow horizon, the shade and the silence, which render more audible the hollow murmur of the great city and the bugles of the neighboring soldiers’ barracks, make them peculiarly dear to boys, to little and grown up children. There, one is in an excavation at the gates of the city, feeling it pant and start, but no longer perceiving it. For half an hour, Laurence and I contented ourselves with this ravine which made us forget the houses and the beaten paths; we were a thousand leagues from Paris, far from every habitation, seeing only stones, grass and sky. Then, already suffocating, eager for the plain, we joyously ran up the slope. The broad country stretched out before us.

      We found ourselves amid the airy and unconfined lands of Montrouge. These neglected and muddy fields are stricken with eternal desolation, poverty and lugubrious poesy. Here and there, the soil is cleft frightfully, as with a horrible yawn, displaying, like open entrails, old and abandoned stone quarries, wan and deep. Not a tree is to be seen; huge windlasses alone stand out against the low, sad horizon. The lands have I know not what miserable aspect, and are covered with nameless wrecks. The roads twist, plunge into hollows and stretch away in a melancholy fashion. New huts in ruins and heaps of rubbish thrust themselves upon the eye at each turn of the paths. Everything has a raw look — the black lands, the white stones and the blue sky. The entire landscape, with its unhealthy aspect, its roughly cut up sections and its gaping wounds, has the indescribable sadness of countries which the hand of man has torn.

      Laurence, who had become thoughtful in the moats of the fortifications, timidly clung to me as we were crossing the desolated plain. We walked on silently, sometimes turning to glance at Paris, which was grumbling in the distance. Then, we brought back our eyes to our feet, avoiding the gaps in the ground, contemplating with saddened souls this plain, the open wounds of which were brutally shown by the sun. Afar off were the churches, the Panthéons and the royal palaces; here were the ruins of an overturned soil, which had been searched and robbed to build these temples to men, to kings and to God. The city explained the plain; Paris had at its threshold the desolation which all grandeur causes. I know of nothing more mournful or more lamentable than those unconfined lands which surround great cities; they are not yet a part of the town and they are no longer the country; they have the dust, the mutilations of man, and have no longer the verdure or the tranquil majesty given them by God.

      We were in haste to flee. Laurence had bruised her feet; she was afraid of this disorder, of this melancholy which reminded her of our chamber. As for me, I found in this wretched spot my love, my troubles and my bleeding life. We hurried away.

      We descended a hill. The Bièvre river flowed along at the bottom of the valley, bluish and thick. Trees, here and there, bordered the stream; tall houses, sombre, narrow and pierced with immense windows, loomed up lugubriously. The valley was more discouraging than the plain; it was damp, oily and full of disagreeable smells. The tanneries there emitted sharp and suffocating odors; the waters of the Bièvre, that sort of common sewer open to the sky, exhaled